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KDE Developers Discuss Merging Libraries With Qt

10-31-2010, 11:10 AM

Phoronix: KDE Developers Discuss Merging Libraries With Qt

Well, here's some interesting weekend news: there's a polarized discussion taking place right now among core KDE developers about merging the KDE libraries into upstream Qt. Cornelius Schumacher, a long-time German KDE developer and currently the KDE e.V. president, has come out yesterday saying, "Let's merge Qt and the KDE development platform. Let's put all KDE libraries, support libraries, platform modules into Qt, remove the redundancies in Qt, and polish it into one nice consistent set of APIs, providing both, the wonderful KDE integration, consistency and convenience, as well as the simplicity and portability of the Qt platform."..

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Sounds nice at first, but definitely will result in major major breakage as these libs get reorganized/merged in with the QT libraries. This should be done as an experimental build first to work out the kinks then be implemented in a future KDE release.

Wouldn't merging KDE libs into QT cause potential licensing issues?

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It's nice and all that they are so passionately debating it, but isn't it completely pointless until they at least know that upstream would consider it. I mean merging back always requires two parties acceptance, so if Nokia says no, it's a no-go. So I don't understand why the make all this fuss about it, if they don't even know what the other "side" thinks.

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It's nice and all that they are so passionately debating it, but isn't it completely pointless until they at least know that upstream would consider it. I mean merging back always requires two parties acceptance, so if Nokia says no, it's a no-go. So I don't understand why the make all this fuss about it, if they don't even know what the other "side" thinks.

Absolutely! As QT is owned by Nokia, Nokia will definitely need to be involved in such discussions at all levels. If they support this, then it'll then be much much easier

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It is funny. When in another old thread i said that KDE is just a tech demo from Qt developers designed to showcase Qt's abilities, many people said that i do not know what i am talking about... That this is FUD. Well... explain this smart guys... For this discussion to even happen, it proves my point...

Sure, KDE is a community project. Sure, some people from all over the world contribute to it. But it's core team that drives it, is from Trolltech. Trolltech points, they follow. It is that simple.

Imagine if the GNOME guys talked about merging gtk3 libs with GNOME libs...

PS: I use KDE now myself. The bugs that plagued me in the past are fixed, and it is reasonably stable now. I got bored with GNOME 2.32 showing no progress and made the switch. I also joined the Greek localization team of KDE to provide some translations. Just noting it just in case someone calls me troll or fanboy again...

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I think the general idea is a good one but not really possible to get to in "one" go.. I think the kdelibs (and kdepimlibs) first need to be seperated in smaller managable Qt modules. Once that's done the steps aren't far to merge to Qt, but even then there will just always be KDE parts that just won't suit Qt thus they will have to remain in separate Qt modules.

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It is funny. When in another old thread i said that KDE is just a tech demo from Qt developers designed to showcase Qt's abilities, many people said that i do not know what i am talking about... That this is FUD. Well... explain this smart guys... For this discussion to even happen, it proves my point...

Sure, KDE is a community project. Sure, some people from all over the world contribute to it. But it's core team that drives it, is from Trolltech. Trolltech points, they follow. It is that simple.

Imagine if the GNOME guys talked about merging gtk3 libs with GNOME libs...

You are so wrong now.
Here is how it really works.
SOME KDE developers are SPONSORED by Qt and some other KDE developers work for Qt. Or you can turn it the other way around. Some Qt developers also work on KDE. But it's certainly not the case that Qt points and KDE leads.. hell no! Remember phonon? It was developed by KDE devs and adapted by Qt because it was simply good.

PS: I use KDE now myself. The bugs that plagued me in the past are fixed, and it is reasonably stable now. I got bored with GNOME 2.32 showing no progress and made the switch. I also joined the Greek localization team of KDE to provide some translations. Just noting it just in case someone calls me troll or fanboy again...